She wasn’t sure exactly how she was going to explain. Kyle would obviously be overjoyed that his best friend was still alive, but he would be devastated that he’d been kept in the dark. No matter how much she or King would try to explain it to him, he wouldn’t understand. He would undoubtedly wonder why he hadn’t been the one to know instead of Sam. And no amount of explaining—that it was part of how King could keep him safe—would ever make it clear.
“Sam?”
Sam jumped when Director Lucas’s voice came through the speakers in the Tahoe.
“Turn my SUV around and bring it back to headquarters now, and I’ll chalk this up to you just desperately wanting to help a friend.”
Sam turned off the bridge. She was only a mile from the CVS. “You know I can’t do that, Robert.”
“Damnit, Sam. You’re leaving me no choice. King is considered a fugitive right now, and until we can prove otherwise, he—”
“Prove otherwise?” Sam interrupted. Her voice near a shout. “Are you joking? Ask the President of the United States of America if Alexander King is a fugitive. Go on. Call him. I’ll wait. Because the only reason you can even call him is because Alexander King kept him from dying. Or did that escape your memory?”
“Sam, I—”
“Or why don’t you check the headlines from a month ago, would you? Check and see if there is a headline about the deadliest pandemic in world history that wiped out half of all American citizens. Oh, you can’t, can you? Because those headlines don’t exist, do they, Robert? D’ya mind telling me why those headlines don’t exist?”
“Sam, point taken. No one knows more than I do what an asset King and yourself have been to this country. But—”
“No buts! That’s it. Just stop right there. You and I both know Xander is not capable of these things. I don’t care how it looks in the news or otherwise. So if you won’t start treating him as the patriot that he is, I will. I will bring him home safe. Because that is what allies do.”
Director Lucas started to protest, but Sam hit the voice volume button until she could no longer hear him. She was enraged. All the things Xander had done in his life to protect the country he loves, and one video threatened to wipe it all away. Sam knew that technology was the devil itself. She knew it from the moment she was injected with a deadly chip from a robot the size of a mosquito. But she never thought it might be the thing that would bring their team down. She was determined for it not to be.
Sam pressed the pedal to the floor as she sped toward the pharmacy. She was only about a quarter of a mile away. The Tahoe was steadily gaining speed until all of a sudden the dashboard went blank and the vehicle stopped accelerating. She stomped on the brake pedal, but it wasn’t working. Director Lucas had the power remotely shut down; he didn’t give a damn about what might happen to her inside. She steered around a car, then pressed her left foot slowly on the emergency brake. Finally, the Tahoe began to slow until she brought it to a stop. She could see the CVS sign just a couple of blocks away. She jumped out of the truck and sprinted toward it. She could hear the sirens blaring in the distance. They were headed her way.
Sam bounded into the pharmacy. She scoured the aisles for the proper section and grabbed three phones with prepaid SIM cards. As she was paying for them at the counter, she saw two police cars go by through the windows of the automatic doors. The checkout clerk followed Sam’s eyes to the door, then looked down at the phones.
“You’re not running from anyone, are you?” The lady smiled when she said it. It was more of a joke than a real question.
“You have a back door?” Sam asked, not smiling.
The clerk lost her smile. “I don’t want any trouble.”
“Neither do I. That back door then?”
“Through the employee door on the back wall,” she said while pointing.
“Do me a favor, yeah?” Sam grabbed the plastic bag of phones.
“Uh, okay.”
“Tell the agents who come in here looking for me in just a moment that they can tell the CIA director that while loyalty can sometimes be difficult, it should always be an easy decision.”
Sam only received a blank stare followed by a nod. It was worth a shot. She stepped away and jogged toward the back door.
“I love your accent,” the clerk called to her.
Sam was already gone.
Chapter Eighteen
Apricot rays of a setting sun beamed through the kitchen window in José Ramirez’s apartment. He called it his own personal safe house, one that neither Raúl Ortega nor the US government knew about. He’d learned from being trapped in the drug lord’s cartel back in Sinaloa that it was smart to keep a back door open for himself. A lesson that was reinforced by the way the CIA was currently turning their back on Alexander King.
After getting in the car with José earlier, they stopped by the hospital and found an empty ambulance. They placed Brittany in the back, and King had Dbie line up someone from the embassy to go pick up her body. Then they went straight to José’s place.
“Okay, first, let’s lay out everything we know.” King walked over and set a cup of coffee on the small, round kitchen table. “I’ll start from my angle. Then you guys tell me yours, and hopefully it will give us some answers.”
Lawson and José gave him a nod.
“I was down here simply to gather some intel on Raúl Ortega. Word was that he was expanding from drugs to human trafficking. In hindsight, this was the first red flag for me, because I’ve never been sent on an intel-only mission.”
“Never?” Lawson said. “Isn’t that about the only thing you agency guys are supposed to do? Gather intelligence?”
“You were FBI, right?” King said.
Lawson nodded.
“Then you know how much you color outside the lines of the official statements.”
“I didn’t even have lines,” Lawson said. “Part of what my director hated, yet loved, about me.”
“Sounds like you guys have a lot in common,” José said. “As for me, I always stay inside the lines.” He smirked as he glanced around his secret apartment.
“Yeah,” King said. “Anyway, last night I was watching Ortega’s place downtown when I saw him pushing a girl inside. Which now I’m assuming was Brittany McKinley.”
“It was,” José confirmed. “I can tell you what I knew—”
“Let me finish first, then you go,” King interrupted. “I woke up the next morning, drove Cali to the airport, and while I was extending my car rental, Ortega’s men put Brittany in my trunk. They filmed someone doing this and made a fake with my face on the body to frame me. And they did it fast.”
“Manuel Cortez is his name,” José jumped in. “And he did it right there in the parking lot, almost a half an hour before you made it back to the car. He’s Ortega’s relation, been grooming him since he was a kid just for things like this. He’s a tech genius.”
“You were there?” King said.
“I was. And when I saw that you really were there, too, that’s when I knew I was finished spying on Ortega.”
“Cheers to that,” King said.
“Speaking of cheers,” Lawson said, raising his coffee cup, “got anything to go with this to make it taste better?”
José got up. “Of course I do.” He walked over to a cabinet above the stove and grabbed a bottle of tequila.
Lawson glanced up at King. King met his eyes, and they both shook their heads at the same time. “He’s not from where we’re from,” Lawson said.
“Wait, you’re from Kentucky?” King said.
Lawson smiled.
“No shit? How’d you know I was?”
Lawson raised an eyebrow. “Everyone knows you’re from Kentucky, rich boy. I watched you on TV when your horse won the Derby.”
King sighed as he ran his fingers through his hair. “A different lifetime, I’m afraid.”
“Yeah, I know what that’s like,” Lawson said as he stared off into space. King could te
ll there was a lot of story there.
“So you want some tequila for your coffee or not?” José was confused.
“What Lawson is trying to say is, you don’t have anything brown in that cabinet, do you?”
José held a blank expression.
“Bourbon, José. Bourbon. You know, the most famous thing about Kentucky?” King said.
“Oh, yeah. No, no bourbon. And I thought fried chicken was the most famous thing from Kentucky. It is down here anyway.”
King and Lawson both rolled their eyes. Then King remembered the two airplane bottles of bourbon Sam always stashed in his go bag. He walked over, pulled them out, and held them up as he came back to the table.
“Sam always takes care of me,” King said as he opened one and poured it into Lawson’s mug.
“Remind me to thank him when I see him,” Lawson said.
“Her. She’s the one who keeps me in line.”
“Yeah? I’ve got someone like that too.” Lawson gave his spiked coffee a swirl. “And I need to call her and check in.”
King poured bourbon into his coffee and stirred it with his finger. “Can we finish here first?”
“Sure,” Lawson said. Then he held up his mug as José finished adding tequila to his coffee. “To José, for scooping us up.” Lawson then looked up at King. “And to the gods for not letting us kill each other.”
They clinked mugs.
Lawson paused with his mug at his lips. “And to whoever is responsible for Brittany being dead, that we get the chance to give them what they deserve.”
The three men sipped their coffee. The last of the toast brought back their focus.
“You guys know the rest after the airport from my end,” King said. “José, fill us in.”
“Two nights ago was the first time I heard your name mentioned. I wasn’t really supposed to, but I am high up enough to have heard it in passing. Needless to say, I did my best to be around to hear what Ortega was saying after that. So, to keep from getting your hopes up, I don’t know the who or the why, but I definitely know Ortega was involved with setting you up.”
“Isn’t that the who in question?” King said.
“Yes, but from what I gather, not entirely,” José said. “Everything I heard came through secondhand knowledge. Other guys closer to Ortega. But the gist is that two days ago wasn’t the first time your name was brought up by Ortega.”
“I have never even been to Mexico City. Why would I be on his radar?”
“Well, I was trying to dig into that without looking suspicious, but if I had to guess, Ortega’s move into human trafficking probably had something to do with it.”
“Why?” King said. “You think he had some sort of connection to Romero in Sinaloa?”
“Maybe. Or maybe just knowing you were the one who shut Romero down made him want to strike first against you.”
“But until this fake video of me surfaced, I didn’t exist. Remember?”
José shrugged his shoulders. “X, one of the many differences between Mexico and America is that it isn’t that uncommon for someone to ‘disappear’ here.”
“No,” Lawson chimed in, “King is right, it made national news when he ‘died.’ No way Ortega had knowledge of King being alive, especially enough to know to set him up. This has to be coming from someone who has access to the knowledge that you never stopped operating for the CIA.”
“Not possible,” King said quickly.
Lawson sat up in his seat. “Possible or not, it’s the only possible explanation.”
King let that sink in. He’d been burnt by “allies” before. So it wasn’t disbelief that the good guys could betray him that made him so sure it wasn’t someone on the inside. It was just the fact that the only people who knew he was alive were people he trusted implicitly. Director Lucas wasn’t a traitor. Sam and the people on King’s own team would never flip. And that left the President of the United States, and he would never turn on his country. He was a rare man of integrity.
“I hear what you’re saying, Lawson,” King said. “But I’m a ghost. Anyone who ever wanted me dead are either buried themselves or satisfied I’m gone.”
“You sure about that?” Lawson looked him dead in the eye. “Because I was put in jail by people I trusted. For the murder of my wife. I spent ten years rotting there while my daughter grew up without me. So I would take another scroll through your Rolodex of enemies before you’re certain it isn’t possible.”
Lawson was right. That a cartel leader would set King up just didn’t make sense. It was as if someone not only wanted King dead but wanted his entire life of service to be forever tarnished along with it.
“This is what I do for a living, King,” Lawson said. “And from where I sit, this one is personal. From the looks of it, they don’t just care that you’re dead; they want to burn your entire life down in the process.”
“You’re talking about the sniper?” King said.
“Yeah. Why the hell wouldn’t they just shoot you? Shooting Brittany further cemented that you’d lost your edge, and maybe your mind. Someone is playing with you. They know your moves before you make them. I found you, so why couldn’t they?”
King had thought the same about the sniper. He also wanted to know how Lawson had found him, but first he needed to ask José a question. “So who was it?”
José looked confused when King stared at him. “What?”
“You know Ortega’s men. Who was the sniper?”
José shook his head. “That wasn’t one of Ortega’s men. He could have hired some ex-military man without me knowing, but he would have shot you instead of the girl. Someone may want to tear you down, X, but Ortega is just a middle man. I agree with Lawson. Ortega wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of making fake videos if he were the one who wanted you. He would have just shot you dead in the airport parking garage.”
“Okay,” King said. “So we all agree it’s someone else who is after me. Now how am I supposed to find out who? I only have one resource at the moment, and she is as much a secret as I am. So she can’t even collaborate with my agency.”
Before anyone could respond, King’s burner began to ring. He pulled it from his pocket and answered it.
“What the hell is going on?” Dbie’s voice was a bit frayed.
“I’m being hunted by a cartel leader and an unknown sniper. What’s up with you?”
“No, X. I mean the video.”
“The fake? It was shot by Ortega’s men in the parking garage. Why?”
“Not that video, Xander. The new video coverage on the news.”
King’s stomach dropped. “What is it?”
“Turn on the news. You’re not going to believe it. It’s so ridiculous.”
King ended the call. “You have American channels on that TV?” King pointed to the corner of the room.
“No, just on my iPad. Why?”
José reached behind him on the kitchen counter and picked up a tablet.
“Pull up the news,” King said.
José opened the iPad and pressed a few buttons, then set it up on its stand so all of them could see.
“Right there, that’s you,” Lawson pointed.
King’s eyes scoured the busy home page of an American news site. Then sure enough, at the bottom right of the page, there was a thumbnail-sized photo of his face. It had a little play symbol in the middle of it. It was a video. José reached over and tapped it. The video filled the screen, and King couldn’t believe what he saw. It was his home in Kentucky, with maybe a dozen police cars in the circular driveway at the front of the house. The graphic at the bottom read, “Rogue Agent’s House Raided, Cocaine Everywhere.” Then the video swiped to a shot of policemen carrying out large black bags from the stables.
“They’re trying to bury you for real this time,” José said.
Though King’s unsure mind was racing—running through all the people who had ever crossed his path and might want to take him down—he was st
ill certain of one thing. Himself.
“Yeah? Well, they picked the wrong guy.”
Chapter Nineteen
As the light behind the cloudy skies began to disappear, Sam stepped out of her cab at Dulles International Airport. It was only a twenty-five-minute drive, so she didn’t get a lot of time to figure out exactly what she could do to help Xander’s situation. She had tried to call Dbie, but she didn’t answer. Then her phone began to ring, and only one person would have the new burner number.
“Dbie, thank God. Have you spoken with X?”
“That’s who I was on the phone with when you called. I was hoping it was you. Since this isn’t your number, I’m assuming Director Lucas isn’t aware you’re calling?”
“I snuck away, you could say. Is Xander all right?”
“Well . . . he’s in bad shape, even by X’s extreme standards, I suppose. Especially after the new video. But he’s alive, so that’s good.”
Sam’s pulse quickened as she entered the airport. “New video?”
“Oh yeah, you probably haven’t—”
“What is it?”
“They set him up, Sam.”
“Yeah, I know he’s been set up, but what’s the new video?”
“No, I mean that is what the new video is. They’re coming at him from all angles.”
“Would you just spit it out already?”
“It’s a news report. Someone stashed a bunch of kilos of cocaine in the stables in Lexington. They actually took it to his personal home.”
Sam couldn’t believe her ears. “What?”
“Yeah, cops were carrying out bags of it. Now he looks like he’s not only part of some south-of-the-border trafficking ring but part of the cartel as well. With the video of him taking the girl and now this, if I didn’t know him, I would for sure believe he was guilty.”
Alexander King Thriller Series: Books 1-3 Page 52
